In Fear

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In Fear's Alice Englert: 'I never thought fame would make me happy' The actor and daughter of Jane Campion talks choosing passion over cash and whether her mum makes sexy films

The Guardian, Friday 8 November 2013

In Fear Production year: 2013 Country: UK Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 85 mins Directors: Jeremy Lovering Cast: Alice Englert, Allen Leech, Iain De Caestecker

For his debut film, In Fear, director Jeremy Lovering needed a cast who were happy to be terrorised. In Fear follows a young couple (Englert and Iain De Caestecker) who, driving to an isolated country hotel, find themselves lost in a labyrinth of narrow roads and looming trees. Filmed chronologically and set in real time, it explores not only fear but trust, ego and violence.

To get the performances he wanted, Lovering strove to instil genuine terror into his leads: they were required to sign up without having seen a script or knowing what would happen. That alone was enough to persuade Englert to dive in: "I was just so attracted to the strangeness of the thing," she says. Lovering wanted to make his actors' reactions as authentic as possible. In the film, the couple have known each other for two weeks, so he had Englert and De Caestecker meet for a fortnight before shooting, improvising in coffee shops in character. They then were dumped in a car in Cornwall and left to work their way through the story as it spooled out around them. The pair were given relationship pointers before each scene, but weren't told what would be physically happening to them. They were given notes independently of each other, and had to keep them secret. The dialogue was improvised. "It's the only time I think I'll ever be an audience to a story as I'm making it," says Englert. "With acting it's important to be able to change your ideas about characters, and this was very good for that. Because as people we don't have much control over the way people see us.

We assume that characters know who they are. No – find out what they want to be, what they're striving for, what they're afraid of being, as opposed to who they think they are. I think you've got to be vulnerable." Lovering says that because they didn't know what their characters' fates would be, they were emotionally prickly throughout. Not quite, laughs Alice. "The one time I got annoyed with Jeremy was when I figured out that the potential first-scene reveal of me in a lead role was gonna be on a toilet. 'I'm on the toilet? So am I doing a shit?' He caught me on the monitor rolling my eyes. That's the only time." Improvisation is nothing new to Englert. She's only 19 but, as the daughter of New Zealand-born screenwriter, producer and director Jane Campion, she's benefited from years of invaluable guidance. Growing up with her mother, travelling the world and living in different countries, she's more worldly wise than many of her contemporaries, with confidence to match.

At 11, Englert starred in her mother's short film The Water Diary. At 15, she left school, quickly bagging co-lead roles in Roland Joffé's Singularity (still unreleased), Sally Potter's Ginger & Rosa and Richard LaGravenese's fantasy drama Beautiful Creatures. Link to video: Ginger & Rosa's Elle Fanning and Alice Englert The latter was pushed as a potential Twilight successor, but it came and went, not causing much of a stir. "To be honest I don't really mind because I didn't want to be in a franchise," says Alice, with visible relief. "It didn't make enough money for that, and I got to come to London." Passion projects are leading the way. "When people are doing a small film for no money, you know they're doing it because they really want to. And that is always attractive." Her next roles are in TV: Restoration drama New Worlds, Channel 4's sequel to The Devil's Whore, screens early next year, and she's just started filming on the BBC1's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Many times in junket interviews she was asked how she would deal with the global fame that might result from Beautiful Creatures, and each time she looked uncomfortable at the suggestion. "I just never thought that that would make me happy," she says. "I didn't like having my ego constantly tugged in this direction that I know is not a healthy one for my disposition and personality, and would not suit me. At all." On one occasion she was asked what it was like shooting a Hollywood blockbuster. "Well," she said, referencing Campion's Holy Smoke, "I'm bred from a woman who had Kate Winslet pissing in a desert, and that was always going to be where I was from." She laughs now at the recollection: "That's the truth. I knew I was going to be OK because there's just not much they were ever going to be able to do to me to change that." When did she first see her mum's films? "I was 13, and these boys had said, 'Your mum makes sexy films,' and I said, 'She doesn't.' Then I watched them and… my mum makes sexy films! Jesus. I'm a huge fan of my mum. I only recently realised that if someone was to say something bad about her, I can't punch them. That that's not appropriate behaviour. I'm very protective." Alice Englert: terrorise her all you like on a film set. But don't diss her mum. In Fear is out in the UK on Friday 15 Nov